Stoffel Aschelberg was one of those Hutterites present at a meeting in Steinabrunn in Lower Austria that suddenly was attacked on 16 December 1539. A group of about 150 participants were held captive for six weeks in the neighboring castle of Falkenstein, southeast of Nikolsburg. Twenty of them, including Aschelberger, were put into a special cell. When all attempts of Catholic priests from Vienna to convert them proved futile, 90 men, after a moving parting from their wives and children, were chained in pairs and shipped to Trieste, to be chained to the galleys of the Doge Andrea Doria. But they managed to escape from the castle where they were imprisoned, by letting themselves down on a rope. Twenty were seized and came to a wretched end on the galleys. The others reached their home in Moravia. Aschelberger wrote a letter to the church at Znaim (Moravia) and three to his wife, which are in the possession of the Hutterian Brethren at Frankfort, South Dakota. In the hymn composed by the captives in Falkenstein, "Ein Lied von den 20 Brüdern auf Falkenstein," the second verse is credited to Stoffel Aschelberger.